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title
Issue # 8 September 2012
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Bio


Anne Hollier Ruddy has always liked to be by water - whether growing up by the sea in NZ, living close to the Thames in Surrey, UK for some years, back to the ocean in Auckland, then for 11 years near the Noosa River and at Bribie Island, Queensland. In 2011 she relocated to Auckland where she now writes poetry – within a short distance of the sea.


Anne Hollier Ruddy


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How Well You Speak

My father taught us to speak
in the cultured kind of voice
breeding bestowed on him

so that the status of his being
both English and white
might blur the fact that we

lived in a rented house
were poor in an ugly way
but worst of all, that his children

were dark (black was a no-go word).
So we spoke as though taking
part in a Shakespearean play.

How well you speak was the
reward for much How Now, Brown Cow.